A PRAYER TO HEAVEN.
The game had passed out of her hands. Should she trust to the blood-thirsty brute, or to the blood-thirsty man?
I think she would have thrown herself upon such mercy as the hound would show her, rather than trust to Roland Mortlake. But the time had passed even while she stood in sore doubt.
That mysterious tremor of the shutter had ceased, and now, in the ominous stillness, she saw—oh horror! what was that?
A small circular hole had been cut in the panel, and through it she caught the glitter of a human eye watching her.
The blood curdled in her veins, her hands fell, clasped, before her, she stood, with her head bent forward, and dilated eyes returning that awful stare.
No horror, caused by death in any form, could have equaled that caused by the mere stealthy glare of a human eye watching her, gleaming upon her, unaccompanied by the visible face.
Suddenly the eye was removed, a sharp click broke the supreme silence, a long, slender tube was thrust half-length through the aperture, and pointed with deliberate aim at her heart.
A blind haze came between her and the hideous vision. Quicker than thought she darted to one side, and sank to the floor, almost insensible.
Her sight cleared, and she looked for the pointed pistol.
It was slowly veering round, to bring her again within range.
Her eyes measured the room wildly. The windows commanded every part of it except the two upper corners. She must fly across the room or be shot like a dog.
She sprang up and flitted swiftly along the wall, and out of range.
Now she was safe for a few seconds. She might crouch upon the carpet and pray a few wild words for safety.
The pistol returned to the door and covered it, in case of attempted escape.
As long as her enemy could get nothing larger than the tube of a pistol in, she was safe in her corner; but if he enlarged the hole enough to introduce his hand with the pistol, she was lost; for there was no large piece of furniture near which she could hide behind.
"If I could but circumvent him until daylight," she thought, "this night's danger would be past."
She looked at her watch. It was two of the night.
"Three hours to wait," she pondered, with a despairing heart. "Can I possibly defy him for three hours? He is crafty and desperate; he is here to put an end to my life, and will not go away unsuccessful. I am terrified, helpless, and without resource. Which of us is likely to triumph?"
Her eyes went longingly to the old-fashioned bell-pulls hanging at each side of the fire-place.
"If I dare to rush across the room and ring a peal to awake the household, I would be shot before my hand left the bell-rope," she told herself.
Why had she lit the tell-tale candle? There it burned, white and faintly tremulous in the current of air caused by the hole in the shutter, slowly wasting away, but distinctly revealing her every movement to the watchful assassin without.
Was there no way by which she could extinguish it and leave herself in the friendly darkness?
If the thought occurred to him of enlarging the aperture and shooting her in her place of refuge, the candle would too surely guide his murderous hand.
Even while thus she reasoned, the pistol was removed, and the grating of a tiny saw against the shutter recommenced.
Horror paralyzed the terrified girl for an instant; the next, with rare presence of mind, she snatched the cloak off her shoulders in which she had been wrapped, and hurled it with all her strength across the room.
Like a huge, ugly bat, it made for the candle, swept it off the table, and she was surrounded in a moment by darkness.
The grating sound came to an abrupt stop, and a smothered oath came through the auger-hole.
"Give up that book, Margaret Walsingham," said the hoarse voice of her foe, "for as sure as you live and breathe your life will go for it if you don't."
Margaret remained still as a statue, not daring to breathe.
"I'll make terms with you even now, if you hand me the book," said the wily voice again.
She bowed her face in her hands, and smiled even in the midst of her terror at such a proposition.
A long silence followed, then the steady sawing of the wooden panel went on.
It was done. A wintry star glimmered in through a gap large enough to admit a man's arm; then the star was blotted out, and a metallic click was heard.
She felt, with a muffled and sickening heart-throb, that her enemy was holding the pistol at full cock toward her, only waiting for the least betrayal to fire.
She raised her head and watched, in fascinated horror, for the flash which was to herald her death.
"Do you surrender?" demanded the assassin, in a voice quick and imperative.
Had Margaret possessed an atom less presence of mind, she would have answered involuntarily "No," in her scorn of the cowardly villain, but she bit her lip in time, and held her peace.
Full well she knew that her first word would be the signal of her death.
"There are two hours and a half before daylight," said the enemy. "Are you willing to have that pistol pointed at you for two hours and a half, waiting to shoot you with the first gleam of daylight, or will you give up the note-book and come to terms with me, for our mutual safety?"
Margaret would not peril her safety by a whisper.
"I don't object, even after all that has passed, to marry you, and let you be mistress of the property, if you will only say yes."
"Heaven grant me patience to keep quiet," prayed Margaret, in her soul.
"Are you there, girl, or am I talking to an empty room?" called the man, with a bitter oath. "Have you slipped, with your confounded cleverness, out by some side door?"
Not a breath answered him; his own breathing almost filled the room as he applied his ear to the hole.
A protracted silence ensued. The man at the window waited with murder in his black soul for the faintest sound within; the hound at the door sniffed with dripping fangs, and waited too, demon-like in his imitation of his master; the lonely woman crouched in the corner, defenseless, weak, affrighted, and prayed that Heaven would keep her safe.
The hours crept slowly on, but oh! how leaden were their wings. The death-watch of these three was drawing to an end.
Margaret kept her dizzy eyes still fastened upon the black line that began to be discernible at the window, and saw a crisis approaching.
"Are you dead or living in there?" said Roland Mortlake, at the auger-hole, "If you are, you're a brave girl, and I want you for my wife. Say 'yes.'"
No answer from within, save the whine of the sleuth-hound at the door.
A distant bugle call from without, from some early huntsman.
An angry hand shook the heavy shutters. Thank heaven! the bolts were the massive bars of the sixteenth century, made for feudal defense and not for beauty.
"If I break in the window, it won't be good for you, Margaret Walsingham," was the boastful threat, as a second shaking was administered to the shutters.
The clear, joyous notes of the bugle sounded nearer; the lusty holloa of the sportsman to his dogs came over the Waaste and into the hole to the ear of Margaret Walsingham, and a rush of joy swept over her and gave her hopes of life.
This early huntsman was no doubt Squire Clanridge, who, she now remembered having heard from Purcell, the steward, was to take the Seven-Oak dogs out this morning to have a run with his own.
He would pass this side of Castle Brand on his way to the kennels, and the cowardly assassin would have either to fly or be seen.
An imprecation burst from him in a voice which betrayed his fury, his disappointment, his apprehension.
A wild smile quivered over Margaret's white face as she saw the arm withdrawn and heard the dismal moan of the night wind through the hole.
Hasty feet crunched on the sleet-covered balcony, and the scratching sound of a man swinging himself down by some rattling chain-ladder followed.
The quick gallop of the horses' feet shortly became audible, and she knew that the squire, with his groom, were clattering up to the court-yard of the castle.
Five minutes afterward a hissing whistle was answered by a snort from the patient blood-hound, which had watched so long at the door, his light feet scratched their way down the slippery oaken stairs, and once more Margaret was alone.
She had been saved through a night of peril such as turns the jetty locks of youth to the lustrous white; she had been saved to rush for aid and have the murderer arrested with the pistol still in his hand.
She was a free woman once more, and God had been kind to her this long dread night.
She rose from her paralyzing attitude and approached her little bed to sink on her knees beside it and pour out her full heart of gratitude to Heaven, but she only went a little way and fell on her face and fainted.
And the first sun-ray of another dawning smote across the weary old world, flushing its icy bosom, and stole through the hole in the shutter, and touched the ceiling, thus casting a reflected beam, like a faint smile, upon the unconscious face of the orphan girl.